ON LEARNING HOW TO USE THE RAFT

ON LEARNING HOW TO USE THE RAFT

"The Buddha once said that after all his years of false starts and dead-end alleys, he finally got onto the path when he realized that he should divide his thoughts into two types: skillful and unskillful. This meant that he judged his thoughts by the results they gave.

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He didn't say that all thinking was bad. He did say that if you thought skillful thoughts for 24 hours, the drawback would be that the body and mind would get tired, so you want the mind to learn how to rest from the thinking. But he never said that the conceptual mind is bad. It's simply a matter of learning how to use your concepts properly. That's the path. It's part of right view and right resolve. These factors of the path involve thoughts.

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So we can't condemn thoughts entirely. We just need to learn how to think in new ways, in ways that are actually skillful, that help free the mind. Ultimately you do get to a place that's beyond concepts, that goes beyond words, but you need concepts and words to help get you there.

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This is a point that a lot of people misunderstand. They think that in order to get beyond concepts, you just drop concepts immediately. It's like the old simile of the raft. The version in the Buddha's teachings is that you take the raft across the river. Then, once you get across the river, you don't need the raft anymore. You can put it aside. Thoughts of right view and thoughts of right resolve are part of the raft. You hold onto them while you're crossing the river, and only then do you put them aside.

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However, in the Diamond Sutra's version of the simile, you get across the river by dropping the raft to begin with. But that version of the simile just doesn't work. If you drop the raft before you've reached the other shore, you get washed away. So learn how to use the raft..."

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Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Excerpt from "The Raft of Concepts"

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Read the full essay here:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/meditations4.html#raft

22nd November, 2022